s much better than unrelieved
black for miladi. And the _soupcon_ of blue on the hat and in the
earrings of miladi lights up the whole personality. Miladi never did a
wiser thing than when she visited Switzerland."

"You think not, Cecile?"

"Indeed yes, miladi. There is no specialist even in Paris like Monsieur
Paulus. And as to the Doctor Lavallois, he is a marvel. Every woman who
is no longer a girl should go to him."

Lady Sellingworth picked up a big muff and went down to the motor,
leaving Cecile smiling behind her. As she disappeared down the stairs
Cecile, who was on the bright side of thirty, with a smooth, clear skin
and chestnut-coloured hair, pushed out her under-lip slowly and shook
her head.

"_La vieillesse!_" she murmured. "_La vieillesse amoureuse! Quelle
horreur!_"

Lady Sellingworth had never given the maid any confidence about her
secret reasons for doing this or that. But Cecile was a Parisian. She
fully understood the reason for their visit to Geneva. Miladi had fallen
in love.

Lady Sellingworth's excitement increased as she drove towards Coombe.
It was complicated by a feeling of shyness. To herself she said that she
was like an old debutante. She had been out of the world for so long,
and now she was venturing once more among the merciless women of the
world that never rests from amusing itself, from watching the lives of
others, from gossiping about them, from laughing at them. She had been a
leader of this world until she had denied it, had shut herself away from
it. And now she was venturing back--because of a man. As she drove on
swiftly through the wintry and dull-looking streets, streets that
seemed to grow meaner, more dingy, more joyless, as she drew near to the
outskirts of London, she looked back over the past. And she saw always
the same reason for the important actions of her life. All of them had
been committed because of a man. And now, even at sixty--Presently she
saw by the look of the landscape that she was nearing Coombe, and she
drew a little mirror out of her muff and gazed into it anxiously.

"What will they say? What will he think? What will happen to me to-day?"

The car turned into a big gravel sweep between tall, red-brick walls,
and drew up before Mrs. Ackroyde's door.

In the long drawing-room, with its four windows opening on to a terrace,
from which Coombe Woods could be seen sunk in the misty winter, Lady
Sellingworth found many cheerful people whom she k